I’m as guilty of being unfair to movies as anyone, and Ant-Man is absolutely case-in-point. Being a fan of Edgar Wright and seeing what happened there made me completely uninterested in the resulting movie, and when I saw it for the first time I filtered the experience through my disappointment and was (surprise! surprise!) disappointed with it. But I watched it again later with different things in mind (hey! I’m a big fan of Evangeline Lily! Corey Stoll! Michael Peña! And that Paul Rudd guy!) and suddenly (surprise! surprise!) I liked it a lot better.

Sometimes I really just want to see other fans admit that sort of thing.

The Matrix proved in 1999 that something could energize fans as much as Star Wars, for the first time since Star Wars, and really it was the curse of bringing Star Wars back. It put fans in the mentality of being open again. Now, I realize Matrix didn’t make as much money as Phantom Menace , and that its sequels were considered as terrible as the prequels (and likewise told stories other than what fans had wanted, which ironically at that point in time was a prequel to the first one, before Star Wars soured the idea of prequels in general). But again, even The Matrix had been replaced by then, because it made it okay to embrace new things.

The Matrix was nowhere near the cultural touchstone that Star Wars was.

I’d wager that Harry Potter was the millennial equivalent of Star Wars, but the Matrix was just a flash in the pop culture pan. There was legitimate Harry Potter mania, with kids dressing up as the characters and staying up for midnight book releases at Barnes & Noble and Borders; that stuff was huge for a while.

And Star Wars always had competition from Star Trek, too. Star Wars went into hibernation from about 1983 to 1993, before the big novel, comic book, toy, and video game push of the mid-90s that led up to TPM.

Star Trek was the big science fiction franchise during the period between the OT and PT, with three tv series and a long-running series of films. Not to mention tons of Trek merchandise around the end of TNG and beginning of DS9.

As a concept, The Matrix absolutely dominated the popular consciousness in 1999. Again, I’m not talking in terms of box office, but chatter, buzz. It was absolutely the cool thing. It got into the mainstream immediately. My high school math teacher talked about it!

And Star Trek might have been everywhere, but it was on a much smaller scale. It was still being talked about as tremendously uncool. Didn’t matter how popular Next Generation had been. In school it was absolutely still at the general level of comics, that dweeb thing.

Really. That’s what you think.
How much matrix merchandise and books do you see now. How many people watch The matrix again and again?
Are there matrix theme parks I missed.
Is there a mafeix shop in Heathrow airport I just missed last time I was there.

The matrix is a totally unknown entity to many people. In sci-fi fan circles it’s well known and loved, but most people on the street will.be able to tell you nothing about it beyond the fact Keanu Reeves was in it.

The matrix didn’t have much in terms of merch anyways, it wasn’t a movie designed for that.

I’m talking about cultural impact, 2 different things… I’m not gonna re-hash what I’ve said a billion times already, but let’s just take one of the most visible impacts the Matrix had in culture, specifically in movies:

So, everytime you see a kung-fu-like combat/fight scene with flashy choreography (and usually slo-mo) in an action movie (even to this day)? Yup, that’s direct impact from the Matrix.

How did the Harry Potter movies impact cinema?

Potter is a very different animal to both Matrix and Star Wars (which are a lot more similar). HP was already a huge phenomenon before they even decided to film the movies… both SW and the Matrix came out of nowhere, no one was expecting them or even knew what to expect from them.

Neither of them are adaptations from popular books. Neither of them are even that original, tbh… Both of them took from a lot of popular concepts & ideas that existed already and mashed them up into movies with unprecedented presentations.

The HP movies did well because the books already had a massive pre-existing fanbase (plus the fans they picked with the movies themselves sure). Both SW and Matrix just hit a nerve with audiences, and both have had lasting impact even thought they might not be as popular as they once were.

And to go further, I’m pretty much certain that the next “iconic” game-changing movie won’t come from an adaptation… that is to say, it’s not gonna be a Marvel or DC movie, or something like HP or GoT… it will be just like SW & Matrix… a movie that will take from all the recent underlying cultural concepts and mash them up together in an unprecedented presentation. It’s gonna come out of nowhere, basically.

Yeah, that too… they made toys, comicbooks, books, video games and a shit ton of regular merch as well… But for the sequels… there wasn’t much for the 1st one, understandably.

Also, again, the fact that there are Harry Potter shops in airports is more due to the success of the books. HP was a gigantic novel success story and it made the news for that long before they even announced a movie.

Oh and lastly, the very fact people even know the word “Matrix” is proof enough of its impact

And yet, it still had a hundred times more long-lasting impact than the Potter movies

In one big respect no they didn’t.

The Harry Potter series is the most influential in Hollywood in changing their model. The age of the kids gave rise to a mode of an almost annual release schedule which Star Wars has embraced and Marvel too.

The Matrix series was aimed at you and me and had influence in special effects specifically but really no lasting legacy in content. The only R rated sci-fi content out there today is pretty unrelated, it’s Blade Runner and Aliens stuff running off 80s influence.

The Harry Potter series is the most influential in Hollywood in changing their model. The age of the kids gave rise to a mode of an almost annual release schedule which Star Wars has embraced and Marvel too.

Not the first movies to do that (LOTR being one exemple), but yes, I’ll admit that indeed had an impact in movie-making (although I suspect the yearly schedule had more to do with the child actors, but whatever).

In that same regard, Avatar had a MASSIVE impact too, cause it basically revived the whole 3D thing.

garjones:

had influence in special effects specifically but really no lasting legacy in content.

As I wrote above, it’s not only the special effects… “movie” kung-fu and wire-work in action scenes wasn’t something very popular or even really used in western cinema at that point (although it obviously was in Asia). Since the Matrix it’s become the norm, and again, even to this day… most movies still use this.